


if bullets carved pathways your body would be a treasure trail

by we_the_hollow



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 23:10:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/we_the_hollow/pseuds/we_the_hollow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two boys love each other and it is as simple as that. Sort of. Not really. Not at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if bullets carved pathways your body would be a treasure trail

**Author's Note:**

> so uhm this is in the same 'verse as the sunset sex zarry and i just thought you might like to know that none of it is in chronological order sooo... :)

No matter what happens or how hard they try their love remains; though broken and cracked and stitched up with amateur hands it remains. Sometimes it bleeds out of their pores illuminating them for all the world to see and sometimes it hurts like falling from heaven without any wings but it remains. Neither knows why and neither questions it because it’s been this way since Fate bound them together. Always breaking, always fixing, and always loving.

No matter how fucked up or uncertain or irrevocable.

“I’m _concerned_ , Zayn.” Harry’s voice holds sincerity in buckets and Zayn knows because Zayn always _knows._ Always. But despite himself he can’t keep the serrated edge from his low voice when he replies. And if it is as gut wrenching as he thinks it is he should be regretting it. But he’s just so _tiredtiredtired._ Of Harry. Of himself. Of the world that still owes him something, though he was so busy being angry he forgot just what that something was. He’s tired.

“I noticed.” The two words drip with venom and Zayn doesn’t mean it but they do. They are silver and gleaming and coated in something toxic and Zayn doesn’t mean it but they are.

“Oh you noticed? You _noticed_ did you?” Zayn is glad that Harry bites back. Is grateful for the fresh wounds where Harry slices through his flesh. Because he deserves it and he knows he does but he also knows Harry will be regretting biting back because that’s what he does and they both know it. But only Zayn knows why. Only Zayn knows this is what Harry does when the boy who broke Zayn seeps into their lives. Yes, only Zayn knows.

“Yes.” _Zayn wonders how much more damage, mutilation, destruction will they have to take from each other before the bullets begin to eat away; at the flesh and the bone and embed themselves in synapses, nerve endings and sinew and replace their blood with gunpowder leaving behind solid silver replicas of the people they used to be? How much more damage? And for once, Zayn doesn’t know._

“Well you’ve not said a word and when you have you’ve just been cagey and closed off and just…you’re shutting me out, Zayn. Again. Just like every other time you come back from there. We have a good few weeks of grace but then it’s back to the usual. And you and I both know it. We do. The only time we talk anymore is not even talking…it’s this or screaming or _I’m sorry love, just tired_. I mean, I don’t get it and it’s fucking eating me alive Zayn. When did you lose the ability to use words and legible sentences that don’t involve me screaming or you trying to shag your way back into my good books? What has he done to you?”

“When have we ever needed words and legible sentences, Harry? Because conversation isn’t our thing, is it?” And the question is blasé, tumbled from his lips with grace and it’s a perfectly valid statement for which Zayn himself has a response and it’s this: never. Because they both just get each other. They’re two halves of the same soul cut from the same cloth after all and so words or legible sentences are very rarely needed. And as for conversations? They are both psychological beings. Harry+Zayn and Zayn+Harry and Zayn=Harry and Harry=Zayn just as Fate decided.

That is what they are and have always been and will always be. Their hearts beat in synchronity for each other and they are twined into the others bone marrow and veins and so words are very rarely needed.

“Now,” It’s one syllable but three letters and each is like another bullet through the chest because Harry is good with words and Harry knows, just like Zayn knows, he’s hit something that might break perhaps a vital organ with his bullets because Zayn blanches though he thinks it’s too irrelevant to see. There’s a definitive crack as the damage ripples through his nerve endings.

“I’ll tell you when I find some,” the response is cold and excluding just as Harry mentioned and Zayn knows it’ll take more than exclusion for Harry to give up because Harry has been excluded all his life and he’s made it through very much alive and he’s here and he’s existing and he’s breathing. Stubborn cunt. And it’s an argument they’ve had a billion and one times so Harry should remember how the song goes but he must have remembered the lyrics different because he leaves the room being ever so careful to make the door rattle in its frame on his way out.

Zayn stares at the door, waits for Harry to remember his lines. But he doesn’t and Zayn is left in the house that all of a sudden feels much colder. Maybe it’s the gunpowder replacing his blood or the salt of the earth that parches his mouth or maybe it’s the guilt and the realisation that one human being can only take so much pain, no matter if they thrive off it or not, and it’ll soon become too much. Yes maybe it’s that. (Zayn knows about _too much_.)

_In a whirlwind of bare skin and lost promises and unspoken words a porcelain boy was in love with a bronze boy and a bronze boy loved a porcelain boy. Two very different types of love, it’s imperative to realize. Absence makes the heart grow fonder but neither knew of true absence and their love became bruised and beaten though all the stronger for its abuse. Bullets carved pathways and words buried themselves in the crevices between bone and muscle and no matter how much it hurt neither would let go. Pain made them stronger. Human. Knuckles bleached white but neither loosened their grip. Pain made them stronger but it made them weaker too._


End file.
